


Solace On The Sun

by colliquial_rain



Series: post httyd3 oneshots: all for us [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Friendship, Multi, New Berk, No dragons, Rehabilitation into life without their dragons, Slow Burn, lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colliquial_rain/pseuds/colliquial_rain
Summary: Astrid is hurting, burning, unravelling under the pin-point truth of loneliness, and sitting at the edge of the cliff-face, she wants to learn to fly.alternatively;Hiccup is comfort when Stormfly flies away.
Relationships: Astrid & Fishlegs & Hiccup & Ruffnut & Snotlout & Tuffnut, Astrid Hofferson & Stormfly, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson, Ruffnut Thorston & Tuffnut Thorston
Series: post httyd3 oneshots: all for us [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879918
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Solace On The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> this fic belongs to a series! all about how the different dragon riders cope with loosing their companions. pls enjoy.

Astrid stares out into the water.

There are not many places on New Berk that feel like home, but Astrid has always been fond of the overhanging cliff. The air there is fresh, saline and flippant and the right amount of cold to turn her nose pink and fingers numb— she is unsure whether it is the altitude or the sea, or a vague combination of both, but Astrid appreciates it nonetheless. Its a not far from familiar rush, an imitation of a sensation that she’s been trying to chase after for a while now.

It’s never the same.

And. Well.

She knows that _she_ will never be the same. There are countless reminders, addendums; footnotes in the world now, a sullen parenthesis on every thing she has to do _alone_. Nothing is the same. Not New Berk, with it’s grassy knolls and towering trees and fundamentally useless steep hills. She hates how fishing is practically impossible and how the majority of soil is infertile and how she has to trek to the Edge to farm food. Everything is different, and not in a way she is comfortable with accepting. And she knew; Astrid was aware that when they released the dragons and set them free of their burden, of their _obligation_ , of them, of the humans, things would change. But nobody told her that it would all change this drastically, this painfully.

She hates it. She hates New Berk. She hates how Stormfly just _left_ her.

Of course, Astrid knows there was no other moral option. At the end of the day, no matter how much the Vikings tried to ignore it, tried to disregard it; sidestep around it, dragons were just that. _Dragons_. They were wild and they were carnivorous and they were great, powerful beasts that could not be confined to a small, nondescript sector of land. Taming was fundamentally cruel, when it was apart of the bigger picture. Unfair. Asking too much of creatures that were already giving plenty.

But Stormfly—

They had known each other for the better half of six (nearing seven) full years. They had been friends. They had been _family_. They had been that and so, so much more. A tandem. _A working mechanism_.

And Astrid doesn’t really know how to approach life without her.

She settles into the soft-grit sand, watching the boats in the dock wade back on forth in the ocean. The sails ripple with the breeze, and they are vaguely reminiscent of the way her braid whipped at first take off. Idly, she scrubs at her eyes with a balled fist, the cotton of her wrist-wraps hitting the ball of her cheeks. They were coming undone. _Stormfly would have warbled to inform me_ , she thinks.

Her smile is watery and desolate.

The sun warms the world, but it doesn’t warm _her_. She feels an icicle floret begin to bloom between the discs of her bones— a glacial chill along the bridge of her spine, sullen and empty. Stormfly used to rest the thick of her tail there, careful to avoid her spines, careful to be gentle.

She thinks about Stormfly a lot these days.

It’s practically impossible not to.

So.

Astrid takes a deep, calming breath and draws her knees up to her chest, her toes drawing up sand. She feels ultimately lost. Tears prickle at her eyes, fat and bejewelled and hot. It is superfluous; unnecessary. She refuses to shed them.

The sky is colour-changing, a nice melting pot of orange and yellow and slight, white shimmer. Passion purple. Valour soaked reds. She wonders what it would be like to be among it, to fly across it, to taste the sugarcane pink on her tongue, the candy-soft blue. Briefly, defeatedly, she ponders if Stormfly misses her. Sailing the skies with her. Just simply being _hers_.

“Hey Astrid.”

She hums in recognition, in silent affirmation that it’s okay, that he can sit. She doesn’t look up. He doesn’t really mind.

There is a quiet thunk as he settles into the space next to her. Hiccup isn’t as young as he used to be, though he doesn’t like to admit it. His joints ache; limbs starting to protest against a life of fighting dragon hunters and dragon riders and dragon — well. His prosthetic squeaks. Silently, Astrid thinks he should do something about it. So she says, “You should oil that.”

“Yeah I know,” he concurs, voice weathered. Strained. Like he had spent a lifetime talking. With chiefdom newly thrust upon him, Astrid thinks he might as well have. “I’ll get around to it.”

“Good. It’ll drive me mad otherwise.”

Silence befalls them after that. Astrid sighs. Since there’s not much else she can do. Even though there’s so much else she _wants_ to do. So much else she needs to.

Hiccup, like everything else, is different. Astrid doesn’t dislike the change in him the way she loathes everything else. It’s different. Odd. Peculiar, but it’s _fine_. It works. He is less impulsive now, less uninhibited. After all, he has an entire Viking village to lead to victory. He has rules, and regulations to follow. He’s finally grounded. Although, Astrid sometimes ponders if it’s more so the fact that he can’t just take off, fly away. Like he used to. Like he _wants_ to.

“I miss him,” Hiccup finally says. He settles a calloused hand on the small of her back. “I miss him indescribably so. And he misses me back.”

Astrid turns her head, to look at him, to analyse him. She doesn’t know why she bothers, though. Hiccup is hard to read: He smiles and he grins and he cries, but he never really tells her what he’s feeling. She’s the same. His eyebrows are furrowed, the skin between them pink and splotched with freckles. “How are you so confident?”

“I’m not, really. But I know he loved me, and I know I loved him.” He scrubs at the five o clock stubble on his jaw. “I know it’s difficult, Astrid. I know it. But Stormfly would never have stayed so long if she didn’t love you too.”

“I know that,” she says so quietly, she isn’t sure Hiccup will hear it. “But what am I supposed to do now?”

He blinks, big, green eyes owlish. “To do now?”

“Stormfly and I, we were a unit. Everything I wanted to do, we did together. I always could rely on her to catch me when I fell, to neutralise a target I failed to see, to _protect_ me,” She frowns, “I never felt safer with anyone else. She was mine, you know. Someone I had, and someone who had _me_.”

“I know.” He did. Truly. Because it had been the same for him, for Toothless.

“How am I supposed to be me, when so much of who I am depended on her, Hiccup?”

Absentmindedly, he kicks some sand with his prosthetic. It skitters over the metal, like small pearlescent beads. “You be better. You be the Astrid I knew in the Arena. You do the best you can and everything else will fall into place. Nothing will be the same, I won’t lie to you and tell you it will hurt less,” his voice wavers, “But I can tell you, _you will be fine_. Because you’re always fine, in the end , Astrid.“

She mulls that over for a moment. She so desperately wanted Hiccup to be right. She had to be okay. She needs to be. Astrid always knew the day would come when she had to say goodbye, but she had always expected it to be on her own terms, when she was old and weary and too fragile to fly. It hurts, stings that the decision was made for her.

For them all. 

But it had happened, and there was nothing she could do. Astrid would wait; she would live her life and hope to see her best-friend once more, if she were lucky. But Hiccup was right. She had to do better. Be better. 

So.

While Hiccup doesn’t stop the heart ache, the broken ribs, the shattered sternum, he soothes the bruise across her life for a moment. She shuffles into him, taking comfort in the leather of his armour, the gruff stubble of his chin tickling her skin. “We’ll be okay.” Astrid decides, closing her eyes. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if the wound is open.

“Yeah,” Hiccup affirms, “We’ll be okay.”


End file.
